Install vCloud Director 8 with High Availability

vCloud Director 8.0 is the latest version available for service providers and can be downloaded from here.

It’s been quite sometime that I am dealing with vCloud Director in our production environment and as well as my test lab. In past I have written a post on how to install vCloud Director 5.5. You can also read the entire vCloud Director post series from Here

Since v8 is out there in market for sometime, I decided to try my hands on it and implement that in my homelab.

There are various posts available on internet about what is vCloud Director and what it does. So I will not talk much about it and jump directly into action.

In this post we will be going to learn how to deploy vCloud Director with high availability.

Pre-requisites before installing vCloud Director:

1: Two server (for 2 vcd cells) with Redhat as guest operating system installed and configured. Hostname and DNS should be configured. Also make sure your Redhat guest os is syncing its time from NTP server.

2: The Redhat Server must have 2 NIC’s and each with different IP address (preferred) for HTTP and Console connection. This server should be reachable to your database server over the network.

3: vCloud Director installation file (bin file) downloaded and copied to server where it will be installed.

4: Certificates must be generated for http and console-proxy connection.

[root@vcd01 ~]# keytool -keystore vcd.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass vcl@2016 -validity 9999 -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias http
What is your first and last name?
[Unknown]: Alex Hunt
What is the name of your organizational unit?
[Unknown]: Cloud
What is the name of your organization?
[Unknown]: Virtual reality
What is the name of your City or Locality?
[Unknown]: Bangalore
What is the name of your State or Province?
[Unknown]: Karnataka
What is the two-letter country code for this unit?
[Unknown]: IN
Is CN=Alex Hunt, OU=Cloud, O=Virtual reality, L=Bangalore, ST=Karnataka, C=IN correct?
[no]: yes

Enter key password for &amp;lt;consoleproxy&amp;gt;
(RETURN if same as keystore password):

b: Certificate for console proxy

[root@vcd01 ~]# keytool -keystore vcd.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass vcl@2016 -validity 9999 -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias consoleproxy
What is your first and last name?
[Unknown]: Alex Hunt
What is the name of your organizational unit?
[Unknown]: Cloud
What is the name of your organization?
[Unknown]: Virtual reality
What is the name of your City or Locality?
[Unknown]: Bangalore
What is the name of your State or Province?
[Unknown]: Karnataka
What is the two-letter country code for this unit?
[Unknown]: IN
Is CN=” Alex Hunt”, OU=Cloud, O=Virtual reality, L=Bangalore, ST=Karnataka, C=IN correct?
[no]: yes

Enter key password for &amp;lt;consoleproxy&amp;gt;
(RETURN if same as keystore password):

You should now run the configuration script (/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/configure) to perform other required post-installation configuration.

If you will be deploying a vCloud Director cluster you must mount the shared transfer server storage prior to running the configuration script. If this is a single server deployment no shared storage is necessary.

If you are not ready to do this right now, you may run the script later prior to starting the vmware-vcd service.

Would you like to run the script now? (y/n)? n

Skipping. You may run the configuration script at a later time by executing /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/configure

Please enter the path to the Java keystore containing your SSL certificates and private keys: /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/vcd.ks
Please enter the password for the keystore:

If you would like to enable remote audit logging to a syslog host please enter the hostname or IP address of the syslog server. Audit logs are stored by vCloud Director for 90 days. Exporting logs via syslog will enable you to preserve them for as long as necessary.

Installation of first cell has been completed here. Let’s see how to deploy additional cell for failover

8: Deploy Additional cell for failover

Copy the certificate file which you created on first vcd cell to your second vcd cell. Also copy the response.properties file to the second cell. The default location for response.properties file is /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/

This file contains the location of the keystore certificates.ks and also the DB server information such as IP, Database instance name, login etc.

a: Install vCloud Director on second cell and press ‘n’ when it invokes for configuration script

You should now run the configuration script
(/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/configure) to perform other required
post-installation configuration.

If you will be deploying a vCloud Director cluster you must mount the shared transfer server storage prior to running the configuration script. If this is a single server deployment no shared storage is necessary.

If you are not ready to do this right now, you may run the script later prior to starting the vmware-vcd service.

Would you like to run the script now? (y/n)? n

Skipping. You may run the configuration script at a later time by executing
/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/configure

b: Mount same NFS share in transfer directory which you mounted on cell-a

3: Invoke the configuration script with -r /path_to_response_file option. Make sure you copy response.properties file on /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/ folder. Also make the owner of the file vcloud user and assign appropriate permission on the file

About The Author

Alex Hunt

Hi All
I am Manish Jha. I am currently working in OVH US as Operations Support Engineer (vCloud Air Operations).
I have around 6.5 Years of IT experience and have exposure on VMware vSphere, vCloud Director,vSphere Replication, vRealize Automation, NSX and RHEL.
If you find any post informational to you please press like and share it across social media and leave your comments if you want to discuss further on any post.
Disclaimer:
All the information on this website is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. I don’t make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information.
Any action you take upon the information you find on this blog is strictly at your own risk. The Views and opinions published on this blog are my own and not the opinions of my employer or any of the vendors of the product discussed.

No Comments

Santosh

This is copy paste from articles . Please elaborate what and why we should upgrade to vcloud director 8 .

NSX support: vCloud Director for Service Providers 8.0 adds support for NSX 6.1.4 in backward compatibility mode. This means that tenants’ consumption capability is unchanged and remains at the vCloud Networking and Security feature level of vCloud Director 5.6.

vApp enhancements: Enhancements to vApp functionality, including the ability to reconfigure virtual machines within a vApp, and network connectivity and virtual machine capability during vApp instantiation.

OAuth support for identity sources: Support added for OAuth2 tokens.

Tenant throttling: : Prevents a single tenant from consuming all of the resources for a single instance of vCloud Director and ensures fairness of execution and scheduling among tenants.

And I will be happy if you can tell me which article I have copied here. If you cant appreciate work of someone then dont blame unnecessarily.